Axl Rose Settles Sexual Assault Lawsuit, Maintains Innocence

Axl Rose and the former model who sued him last year for sexual assault have reached a private settlement, Rolling Stone has learned. In a statement, Rose maintained he did not violently attack and rape plaintiff Sheila Kennedy in a Manhattan hotel room in 1989, as she alleged.

“As I have from the beginning, I deny the allegations. There was no assault,” the Guns N’ Roses frontman tells Rolling Stone. The terms of the private pact were not disclosed.

“Mr. Rose has suffered greatly from this lawsuit, and I am pleased that he will now be able to move on with his life,” Rose’s lawyer, E. Danya Perry, said in a separate statement.

The parties recently filed paperwork in New York stating they had agreed to discontinue the case with prejudice, meaning it can’t be filed again at a later date. They further agreed to cover their own legal costs, the filing obtained by Rolling Stone said. Attempts to reach Kennedy and her lawyer were not immediately successful.

In her lawsuit filed last November — just a day before the deadline to file otherwise expired claims under New York’s Adult Survivors Act — Kennedy claimed that Rose assaulted her in February 1989 after they met at a nightclub. An actress and model who was Penthouse magazine’s 1983 “Pet of the Year” and who appeared on the publication’s cover four times, Kennedy said she ended up in Rose’s luxury hotel suite on Central Park West a short time later because he was hosting an afterparty there.

At the hotel room, Rose “pushed Kennedy against the wall and kissed her,” the lawsuit said, describing the initial interaction as consensual. “Kennedy found Rose attractive and did not mind,” the suit stated. “She was open to sleeping with him if things progressed.”

The situation allegedly took an unwelcome turn when Rose purportedly turned “aggressive.” Kennedy claimed he pushed her down, dragged her across the suite by her hair, and raped her. “Rose made no attempt to ask for or check that Kennedy was consenting,” the lawsuit said. “He treated her like property used solely for his sexual pleasure. He did not use a condom.”

Rose denied the allegations last year through a different attorney. “Simply put, this incident never happened,” lawyer Alan Gutman told Rolling Stone at the time. “Though he doesn’t deny the possibility of a fan photo taken in passing, Mr. Rose has no recollection of ever meeting or speaking to the plaintiff and has never heard about these fictional allegations prior to today. Mr. Rose is confident this case will be resolved in his favor.”

Rose, 62, has been accused of domestic and sexual abuse before. Kennedy’s lawsuit referenced claims from Rose’s former partners Erin Everly and Stephanie Seymour, detailed in a 1994 People magazine story. Everly sued Rose for abuse in Los Angeles civil court that year, later settling the claims out of court. 

Kennedy first detailed her allegations against Rose in her 2016 autobiography, No One’s Pet. She voiced them again in Look Away, the 2021 documentary on sexual misconduct in the music industry.

From Rolling Stone US.